The General

Thanksgiving began as a gathering of two tribes, the Wampanoag Indians and the Pilgrims, and today that hospitable flavor remains in some dining rooms, where by tradition a few seats are reserved for guests who are far from home or otherwise on their own. This year, the Howe family of Westport, Connecticut, had several last-minute additions to their holiday table. One of them was an Iraqi general, a thirty-year veteran of Saddam Hussein’s army, in from Baghdad.

The general, along with seven other Iraqi government officials, was in the United States to observe security facilities along America’s borders. The tour, arranged by the State Department, had taken the Iraqis to Seattle, El Paso, and Jacksonville. Now it was finishing up with trips to American households to celebrate Thanksgiving.

At one o’clock in the afternoon, the general, accompanied by a State Department interpreter, arrived at the front door of the Howes’ 1850 Greek Revival. Sam Howe is a cable-television executive; his wife, Rebecca, had answered a notice in the Westport News, announcing that the International Hospitality Committee of Fairfield County was soliciting families to entertain foreign guests. “We were expecting a Fulbright scholar, or maybe a diplomat,” Rebecca said. The Howes had invited a dozen relatives, and had learned of their guest’s identity only thirty-six hours before they were to sit down to dinner. They were a bit apprehensive. “We were afraid that having him might alter the tone of the celebration,” Sam said. “We thought he might show up in uniform,” Rebecca added.

The general—who wore a corduroy topcoat, a maroon V-necked sweater, and a rep tie—turned out to be an ideal guest. Urbane and inquisitive, he spent much of the day on the living-room couch, sipping cranberry spritzers and sampling Wellfleet oysters, spiced nuts, and endive-and-blue-cheese crudités. The general was well informed about the issue of the day, the Iraq war, but he refused to dominate the discussion. “I would like to know what you think,” he said when he was asked for his political opinions. “It is a day for laughing, not shouting.”

The general, who is in his late fifties, is an old hand at courtly palaver, having visited every country in the former Soviet Union as well as most of the Middle East. This was his first trip to America. He’d been nervous about coming, because the America he’d seen in movies looked like a nation of bloodthirsty savages (a perception that Saddam’s propagandists had been happy to reinforce). It was a shock to him that he had not been shot at during his weeklong trip. “You are a civilized country,” he said over and over.

After the meal, the group (which included two academics, a therapist, and a folk-music teacher) retired to the living room, where the Howes had a fire going. The general described his tour, earlier that day, of the Westport police station. An officer there, “a very generous man,” had shown the general around the jail. “I said to him, ‘What is the biggest problem in your precinct, murder or robbery?’ Do you know what he said to me? ‘Neither.’ His biggest problem is traffic. You are a very civilized country.”

“When you return to Iraq, what will your biggest problem be?” a guest asked.

“Do I have to answer that question?” the general said. “I am enjoying myself too much to think about that right now.” He did admit that he was dreading the stomach-churning corkscrew landing that his plane would be forced to make at the airport in Baghdad.

Someone brought out a camera and tried to take a group picture. The general edged away. “I have to ask—is this for publication?” he said.

“It’s for a family album,” the photographer said.

“Good,” the general said, moving back into frame. “Because if certain people in Iraq were to find out I am in America . . .” He drew his index finger across his throat.

At the end of the afternoon, the general, declining a second serving of chocolate-chip pie, got up from the sofa and said it was time to go.

“I hope we have not made your wife work too hard,” he said to Sam.

The general planned to spend his last night in America in New York City, where he had a ticket to see “The Phantom of the Opera” on Broadway.